Talk:Format guideline

Hello, so let's kick this up, what things should we address first?

Which things should be established first?

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Unresolved Issues

The link that says that this page [format guidelines] is available in Spanish is incorrect. If you click on the Spanish link, the language displayed is actually Portuguese. I will change the label if I can. --popocatepetl (talk) 13:30, 3 June 2013 (CDT)

Where's the "References & Translator's Notes" section?

So we've agreed to link terms and references in some separate Notes/References section, but where should this be? [Option 1] The Discussion pages of each chapter? If so, we'll have to clean up those pages - old discussions archived away (or just deleted) while leaving space for current issues to still be debated. GTO, perhaps they should be unified to look something like this?

• Table of contents
• References & Translator's Notes
• Current translation issues (with optional link to old discussions elsewhere?)
• (or maybe have Old Discussions stuck as an appendix at the bottom of the chapter's discussion page?)

Or would we rather hide casual readers from all our talk, therefore [Option 2] place Notes/References at the bottom of the main chapter's text after a horizontal line?

While i would like to have everything related to be on one page

But i guess thats not going to happen when people will continue to use the indivual chapters page, while it'll be great to have everything organised you must admit what you are proposing is going to a signifcant amount of time, if we use [option 1]

[option 2] At the same time i don't think its right to mess up the chapters with the notes at the bottom. But i do like the idea of linking the words to something us, saves us all the restructuring.

I mean why don't we jus link the word when it first appears on the chapter, to the related notes/refs in the talk pages, once only.

That way if peope don't understand it, they can click it ,and get cluded in.

but once only, it'll save time from changing all the same words to have the link.

Onizuka-gto 09:17, 27 April 2006 (PDT)

Oh of course I meant we only link them once. My question was: where will that link point to? As in where do we explain what the Reference is? In the chapter's talk pages (so that people don't get spoilt of future things as might be the case in an 'all references are on this page' situation)?

Besides, Option 1 really shouldn't take much time. Ok fine, delay the "sort out discussions into current vs resolved" - how much work is it to create 1 section at the top of each chapter's talk page? Actually, this'll be much easier if I show you what I mean won't it? Ok, give me a few hours to deal with other things first, then I'll do Ch 2's talk page in what I mean by Option 1.

--Psieye 10:51, 27 April 2006 (PDT)

Ok, Chapter 2's Talk page has been formated as per Option 1. If you want me to do the other chapters, I'll have to do them another day as I've got approaching deadlines now.

--Psieye 12:18, 27 April 2006 (PDT)

I've given this matter some thought, and here's how I've tried to resolve it. I'm currently working on vol.2 ch.4, and in the Talk page for that chapter, I've set up three main sections: Original Text for the original text of the novel (which is temporary - we're not producing a Japanese bootleg, here - and only while I'm translating, as a reference); Translation Notes for my translation notes (that is, my cleaned-up versions of whatever discussion has taken place on each thorny spot, as well as remarks on in-text references); and Comments (which is where the editors, myself, and other visitors to the page can discuss the issues. The Comments section is obviously intended to be messy -- but ideally, when the translation is over, the Translation Notes section will be clean and immediately useable. When the project is complete, we can move the Translation Notes to a separate wikipage, one for each chapter), and maybe include links in the text to the relevant notes.

How's that?

--Freak Of Nature 13:01, 27 April 2006 (PDT)

So in the short-term, it means it'll boil down to "Translation Notes" and then a Discussion section as before. Well, certainly you've hammered out details which are plausible and I have no objections. I guess it is more sensible to just leave Discussions/Comments as a mess and leave them like that, instead of wasting time organising them into "present" and "past". Aye ok, seems we're going for Option 1 with FON's details then.

--Psieye 13:23, 27 April 2006 (PDT)

Well if you blokes have the time to do it, then i have no objections.

Onizuka-gto 15:24, 27 April 2006 (PDT)

Navigation

No one's really discussed this, so I've added a navigation bar of sorts to the bottom of all completed chapters/entries/etc. Note that I had to use hardcoded values since for some reason the main.css does not include "wikitable" or "prettytable" as a class, let alone have the values required for it. Values in question can be found here.

Please use the following example source code at the end of each chapter when you are finished with it:

{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[Suzumiya Haruhi|Main Page]]
| Back to [[Suzumiya_Haruhi:Volume1_Chapter1|Chapter 1]]
| Forward to [[Suzumiya_Haruhi:Volume1_Chapter3|Chapter 3]]
|-
|}

Proof of Concept:

Return to Main Page

Back to Chapter 1

Forward to Chapter 3

If there are no problems with this format, please move this comment to the main page. :) -- velocity7, 7 May 2006 22:00 EDT

I like the idea, but have some small changes to suggest:

Back to Chapter 1

Up to the Main Page

Forward to Chapter 3

My changes are changing "Return to" into "Up to" and changing the order. Also, I made the whole text be part of the links, not just the name of the destinations. Take a look at the markup if you want the details.

Thanks, velocity7, for finding the markup to make this work!

--BlckKnght 19:42, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

Looks fine, have at it. :)

By the way, initially my first proposal for this was that the navigation would be at the top and bottom. Should this be kept, or is the bottom enough?

For everyone else, the new source code is as follows:

{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| [[Suzumiya_Haruhi:Volume1_Chapter1|Back to Chapter 1]]
| [[Suzumiya Haruhi|Up to the Main Page]]
| [[Suzumiya_Haruhi:Volume1_Chapter3|Forward to Chapter 3]]
|-
|}

-- velocity7, 7 May 2006 23:28 EDT

mmm......to be honest i'am undecided about this, it does look like a pretty interesting idea, but at the same time it is a pretty big implimentation in terms of layout and im sure there are alot of people who will fall into both camps. I think we more input from the other Project Translators,Dedicated Editors and other users before we can consider this. I don't think there is a rush at the moment as only one volume has been done, but when more are completed, i can see how this might be a benefit for those fast readers and are too lazy to go back to the previous page just to click the next chapter for the 12th time.

Onizuka-gto 21:19, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

In my opinion the code should go in a template and provide links to all chapters. You only need to add the template, e.g. {{Navbox_Volume_1}}, at the end of each chapter. See wikibooks.org for some examples. --89.53.204.166 08:12, 8 May 2006 (PDT)

Ok, I've risen to the challenge and created Template:V1TOC:

Volume 1 - The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi / 第一巻: 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱

Color Illustrations	Prologue	Chapter 1	Chapter 2	Chapter 3	Chapter 4
Chapter 5	Chapter 6	Chapter 7	Epilogue	Author's Notes	Editor's Notes

To include it, as I did above, use this code:

{{V1TOC}}

Note that when it is included from one of the chapter pages, the current page will show up in bold and will not be a link.

If the template is edited, the included text will change on every page on which it is used (including this one!).

What does everyone think? It will certainly be easier to use templates for this kind of thing, rather than hand crafting navigation boxes on each page. I thank the anonymous editor above for the suggestion.

--BlckKnght 19:34, 8 May 2006 (PDT)

mmm...i'am abit skeptical about this....

I've thought about it, and i do agree that eventually we will need some sort of internal navigation links, but im not so sure about your "boxy" design. how about you make a dummy page so we can have a general idea of what it will look like?

Onizuka-gto 05:46, 9 May 2006 (PDT)

I like where this is going. I've modified the template a little bit; maybe width: 100% is going overboard? Also, made the table go in the center in this way, and made text in the boxes go in the center. Looks a lot simpler, no?

Onizuka-GTO: Here's an example page, with the TOC at the top. Maybe we need a second part at the bottom without the title? Suggestions?

-- velocity7, 10 May 2006 16:53 EDT

Thanks for the example page, i now know why i did not like this current design, it seems unnecessary to have a link for all the chapters.

In the other hand if it had the links for only next chapter and the previous one and was at the end of thr page, it will not disrupt the overall chapter with its minimal presents.

To be honest, i do not see why you need to have a box around the links, prehaps a simple "Previous Chapter" and "Next Chapter" would be sufficient.

Onizuka-gto 14:58, 10 May 2006 (PDT)

I have no idea how we could make the template dynamic enough to do a previous/next chapter business sort of thing. Anyone?

-- velocity7, 10 May 2006 19:21 EDT

Maybe not even dynamic, we can simply just link it to the next chapters the old fashion way....

Onizuka-gto 17:10, 10 May 2006 (PDT)

The previous discussions have been moved to the forum. Please click on the following links to view them.

• anything to put on the front page?

• Chapters with multiple Translators Conflicting

• Kyon's Narration Tense

• Markup: CAPITALS, italics and bold, oh my!

• Page names

• Proposal to revise the number of Translators per volume

• Solution to Partial Script Contributed

• Templates for common entities

Resolved Issues

The previous discussions have been moved to the forum. Please click on the following links to view them.

• Chinese vs. Japanese Translation

• Common Japanese terms carried over

• Correct English terms for "Shinjins" and "Locked Space"

• Dialogue syntax issues

• SOS-Dan's full name

• Standard English Words? i.e. "Consortium"

Page formatting in full-text PDFs

I noticed that the Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria full-text PDF is extremely difficult to read. I noticed multiple reasons for this. For one, the lines are very long, over 100 characters per line. Secondly, it's in Calibri, a sans-serif font that is the default in Microsoft Office 2007. That it's sans-serif doesn't really matter, but that font in particular doesn't seem to work well.

This came to mind because I'm currently doing major offline edits for the first chapter of a teaser project, Tabi ni Deyou, and I'm working in the LaTeX typesetting program. I'm using the A5 paper size instead of A4 and the default LaTeX font (Computer Modern), and I find that it's far more readable than the aforementioned PDF I downloaded, with about 60 characters per line and really smooth typesetting. It's far more like reading a real light novel, except on a computer screen. I compared it to my official Suzumiya Haruhi English translations, and the pages are about the same physical size, but the margins are slightly smaller in my PDF, though it's not a drastic difference.

In short, I was wondering: should there be guidelines for PDF conversions of fully translated novels for readability and consistency? Also, should they reference Baka-Tsuki (which the Utsuro no Hako one has no mention of)? Should they credit the translators and editors? CarVac 05:25, 21 March 2011 (EDT)

3 things: guidelines, or the closest we have. Additionally, I've worked with LaTeX, admittedly more on the mathematics side, and it seems like converting a whole text to it would be resource intensive, unless there exists scripts to do so. Additionally different typesetters for LaTeX may have different default fonts (I know that the major implementation is different for Mac and Windows, at least). What program are you using, and is the font available online somewhere? I also observe that many of the PDF translations are available only on the forum: I would definitely run a poll (I think translators have permission to make them, I know project editors don't), in addition to any debate here on wiki, before creating any policy, especially with regards to giving credit. --Saganatsu 07:26, 21 March 2011 (EDT)

LaTeX is designed so that no matter what system you run it on, you will always get the same result. It's free and open-source, and it's available for basically any system ever. Personally I use LaTeX 2e on Linux, but you should get the same exact result for any operating system, and Computer Modern comes with every install of LaTeX so far as I know. Also, LaTeX is designed for books as well as mathematics; several publishing companies use it to typeset their books.

It's actually not that hard to convert a novel to LaTeX; the hardest part was formatting the title page photo to fill the sheet, but I could take what I have done and make it into a template for future use. My code could use a little neatening and documentation in that case, though. Then, you could simply download the images, copy the wiki code into a new file, and use find-and-replace on things like ellipses, quotes, photos, italics, and section breaks. I converted a chapter to LaTeX in about half an hour that way, so it's not a big time investment to create a PDF, unless the chapter started out with extremely inconsistent formatting. --CarVac 16:07, 21 March 2011 (EDT)

That's great! I'm going to look for a wikicode->LaTeX converter, and If I don't find one, probably try tot build one myself. If I end up building one myself could I look at what you've produced to get the formatting looking correct? --Saganatsu 16:21, 21 March 2011 (EDT)

One thing is that any existing wikicode->LaTeX converter is not likely to be suitable to typesetting light novels as books. There are other issues such as the fact that different projects format the novels slightly differently. So, I just created a LaTeX document that explains mostly everything on how to convert the wikicode to LaTeX, and also doubles as a template; you copy it into a new file, modify it, and compile it, and it'll render a nice novel! I'm gonna post it on the forum thread you linked to earlier. --CarVac 19:26, 21 March 2011 (EDT)

Translation to italian

Hello! Can I translate the Project Presentation in Italian? NiwaKonzen 28 January 2014

Feel free to do a Project Guidelines page. - Misogi 16:04, 28 January 2014 (GMT+1)

Baka Ex Reader Formatting

Hello I'm just wondering if there are certain guidelines that need to be followed to get pages to work with the Baka Ex Reader because I don't have an android phone to do tests with I'm wondering what they are so I can fix problems where people can't read them on their phones. If there are already guidelines on this somewhere I apologize but I cannot find them. If there are no existing guidlines please tell me what you know or get apge with that info. It would be quite helpful to know what is wrong with a page for the reader. Thanks in advance =)
- Yascob99 (talk) 13:31, 10 March 2014 (CDT)